Summary:
Savage Seas is the new book for Exalted, intended to cover the life and adventure possibilities on the high seas of the Second Age of Man. It’s a swell book, but it’s the first time that a White Wolf product has made me think that it might have been co-produced by Steve Jackson Games. The book is literally packed with hooks, crunchy bits, and adventure ideas, but at the same time the first half of the book’s treatise on sailing is technical and…well, dense. Overall, Savage Seas is a good, solid buy that’s surprising in its tone, detail, and content.
As a broad overview, Savage Seas is a 128-page sourcebook written by Robert J. Defendi, Dan Quackenbush and Scott Taylor, and includes stats for twelve ships, nineteen aquatic creatures, a new fey warrior, seven new spirits, ten new Solar Charms, seven new Spells, eight new Artifacts, and more than a dozen new weapons (depending on how you count them.) Obviously, the book includes plenty of crunchy bits, but in addition to those it also includes heavy setting material on navigation by sun and stars on a flat earth, fleet organization and data on the personalities that lead those fleets, trading, piracy, First Age technology, and the nitty-gritty of how ships work. In addition, it also includes an abstracted mass-combat system. For $17.95, it’s hard to feel that you’re not getting your money’s worth just as far as raw information is concerned.
Details:
The book skips the traditional fiction and steps right into an introduction that explains the goal of the book. In short, Savage Seas attempts to describe how ships work and the ins and outs of maritime life in a fantasy setting for readers who probably aren’t familiar with ships. If that’s the target audience, I fit it to a tee — while I have some knowledge of shipboard life, it’s not extensive. After the statement of intent, a Recommended Fiction and Non-Fiction list follow, as well as a Bibliography. The ubiquitous glossary isn’t present, instead broken up and placed across the second chapter.
The layout is standard for the line, and the art, in my opinion, of uniformly high quality. There are a few editing misses as far as spelling, but nothing that ruins the feel of the book.
At its heart, Savage Seas is seemingly two books, the first made up of the first two chapters of the sourcebook, and the second consisting of the rest. The first book can be viewed as a rather detailed treatise on sailing, shipbuilding, and the seas of the Second Age. The second book is information on setting and rules for a sea-based game as far as “crunchy bits” go. The first book may be too dry for some, but the second one is standard Exalted fare, full of new magic weapons, strange magic, and lots of threats for the PCs of any game.
Chapters One describes shipboard life, ranks and titles on a ship, terminology, navigation on a flat earth, charms and hazards. Chapter Two describes the ships themselves, detailing why they float, why they sink, maintenance, construction, and gives stats for a dozen ships, ranging from Coastal Traders to First Age Warships. Scattered throughout are sidebars describing everything from the nature of scurvy in Exalted and seafaring superstition in a world where the gods can be placated, to legends of First Age ghost ships. There are also notes on freshwater travel and dangers, for those of you hoping to stay a little closer to shore.
These two chapters are both the most dry, and the most informative. To be honest, I got a GURPS vibe from it. Admittedly, that’s not a draw for some people, but in this case I found it to be a pleasant surprise. While there are some out there who are going to say these chapters were useless, since anyone could look this information up, anyone who doesn’t have knowledge of the ages of sail is going to find them incredibly informative. Sure, I could read through a bunch of dry textbooks on sailing to get up to speed, but all of the information I need is here, in one place, with one important exception (see below.) I came out of these chapters with a solid idea on how to run a seafaring game, how to deal with casual voyages (by which I mean trips which aren’t the center of a campaign) and about two dozen story hooks.
Outside of the problem noted below, I will also note that the section on navigation was a little…difficult for me to understand. I’m still unclear on how apparent bearing related to the Elemental Pole of Earth works. I recommend anyone really interested in that go through it two or three times (and then post in the forums to explain it to me.) I don’t mark this as a flaw of the book, but something I’m not getting. Blame me.
Chapter Three, titled Maritime Trades, and describes the navies of Creation, the admirals in charge of them, and various occupations, from rebels to pirates (and includes descriptions of pirate bands and several havens.) There’s also a mass-combat system capable of being used for shipboard combat as well as non-sea battles (with a little tweaking.) Chapter Four is titled Creatures, Gods, Charms and Artifacts and describes, well — creatures, gods, charms, and artifacts. The creatures range from sea serpents, dragons, demons, a new fey warrior, and other fantastic creatures, to fugu fish, piranha, great whales and mundane beasts suitable for use in a fantasy campaign. The charms are all Solar, but there are some spells suitable for use by any Exalted type. Also present are a bevy of First Age weapons, with a new kind of daiklaive and powerful ship-based essence weapons represented. In addition, there’s a selection of more mundane heavy weapons.
Chapters Three and Four are more standard Exalted fare than the first two, and so are probably more palatable to the majority of fans. I know that I wasn’t disappointed in the least by the selections within, and have even made brief use of the mass-combat system in a recent game. It probably deserves extra mention, so I’ll describe it now. Units are abstracted heavily into three statsl, and Exalted and heroic members add a dice bonus to resolution of attacking or defending. Players can sacrifice successes in combat to buy “dramatic moments,” which serve as jumping-off points for roleplaying and the ability to turn the tide of a battle. For the most part, I believe this system is best used to describe battles going around the Exalted, and that it would abstract Solar PCs too heavily, a problem which it warns of. Getting this system to work with land battles wouldn’t be too difficult at all, in my opinion, but it’s mainly a tool to assist a Storyteller if he doesn’t have a predetermined outcome for a conflict.
As an example of the kind of high point these chapters have is the sidebar describing a Behemoth that serves as artificial island, demon nest, and tomb for First Age Solar Exalted, all at once. It’s just a sample of the kind of writing that’s made the whole line enjoyable, and it’s present in spades here. If the first part of the book was rife with plot hooks for a Storyteller, these sections are even more full of potential.
I have only one complaint about this book, and it’s relatively minor. While all of the ships described have a Speed attribute, the attribute is relative, and doesn’t help a Storyteller figure out how long a trip from point A to point B will take. There are no speeds listed as far as average knots per day, and real world figures aren’t as helpful as they might otherwise be because the ships of the Second Age of Man benefit from advanced knowledge of rigging from the First Age. Thus, looking up the speed of a trireme in real life may not really simulate the speed of a trireme in Creation. This is, of course, not a big deal, and only the most anal-retentive players will make a fuss. But given the sheer thoroughness of the first two chapters, I was surprised not to find this information. On a similar note, the Northern Longships weren’t described, despite the fact that they’re mentioned numerous times as a ubiquitous threat to the Realm.
Overall, this book is a winner, but a highly subjective one. I don’t, as previously stated, have a ton of knowledge concerning real world sailing, so the first two chapters were very interesting for me. The final two were standard Exalted material — high quality, evocative, and incredibly useful from both the standpoint of story material and useful “trinkets” for players. I can see why some people won’t rate this book as highly as Scavenger Sons or Book of Three Circles, but in my mind it stands as proof that Exalted, as a line, is one of the best White Wolf has — it handles the nitty-gritty details as well as GURPS does, when it wants to, and doesn’t sacrifice the kind of novel take on sword & sorcery fantasy to do so.
Style: 4
Substance: 4
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